One comment for now....

Oracle TNS – such a simple concept, such a pain in the ass.

Office 2007 BETA 2 : Initial View

Got my hands on a copy of the latest Office 2007 BETA 2 today. So far I’ve only installed the end user apps, and none of the server stuff.

Initial impression is that there may be something worth buying here. With the BETA you do get everything in all versions, so the cost of all this BETA stuff when it’s in production would be in the thousands rather than the hundreds (and that’s not including the server apps) I suspect, but still, it looks good.

The user interface is completely new in the basic office apps (Word, Excel etc) although Outlook is pretty similar. I’d guess that when its finalised everything will have the new GUI.

Unfortunately the VISIO BETA 2 just crashes each time I try and load it, and since it’s all running on a clean install of XP SP2 then I presume it’s just broken. If it isn’t going to work on that then where is it? Hope it will be fixed soon.

The other (very) annoying feature, which I presume will be fixed in the final release is that when you open Outlook it spurns multiple Word windows (when you create and email, add a contact etc). There just blank and you can’t close or minimise them. I think this problem goes back to Office 2003 as it happened on there too, but you could turn off ‘Use Word to edit messages’ which fixed it. That options not available here, and I suspect using Word is pretty integrated to save creating two spell checkers, two grammar checkers etc.

That problem only seems to appear on multiple monitor setups, so if you’re on a single screen then all should be well. At least, that’s what I found in Office 2003. Primarily I’ve noticed this with Matrox cards, probably something to do with the way they manage the desktop (far superior to other ‘gamer’ cards trying to power two screens from one chip).

Still trying to see what InfoPath and Groove do for me that you couldn’t do with a well tuned SharePoint setup, but we’ll see.

One final point of note so far with Outlook 2007. With an IMAP connection it seems to want to do a lot more to keep the folders synchronised than the 2003 variant did. I’ve not had it installed enough to see what it’s doing, but it’s certainly a lot slower than 2003. Whether this is due to BETA or a new way of looking after IMAP folders we’ll have to wait and see. A bit more digging required there!

Still, a promising start for a BETA application and I’ll wait and see how I get on with it over the coming days and weeks.

Firewalls

I’ve just tried Zone Alarm as Norton is simply hogging too many resources.

It’s a great little (free!) app, and ideal for what most home users would want. One caveat though if your looking at using it on an IMAP connection – every time a message comes in or you synchronise your folders (as I do frequently) and I presume you wouldn’t be using IMAP if you only had one PC… then all messages are downloaded, not just the headers. This is fine if you don’t have large attachments, but when you’ve been away from your PC for a while or using a different PC mainly and want a quick check from a secondary machine this is quite annoying as Outlook freezes while Zone Alarm does its stuff.

For the general home user though I’d highly recommend it and suggest paying for the all singing all dancing version. Its cheap and doesn’t slow your PC down half as much as Norton or McAfee do. Additionally, the ‘challenge’ aspect of the email filtering is very useful. You can buy this in various forms from many vendors, but since it’s integrated into Zone Alarm makes this a much more seamless inclusion.

Verdict – A definite for home users, go for Norton if you’re a corporate client (the interface on McAfee is second only to your new bourn child’s first attempt at mummy and daddy).

Internet Explorer 7

What a load of crap. Use Firefox.

I tried to install IE7, given its promises of tabbed browsing and the like. This worked fine on my laptop, so I thought I'd give it a go on all my PCs. What a fool I feel now.

The installer crashed, not usually the catestrophic failure this one turned out to be. I've no idea what MS have done to create such a mess.

It prompted for a reboot, claiming it needed to restore old files, so, like a fool, I let it restart.

Upon reboot IE just didn't work. It wasn't version 7, 6 or any other. Windows thinks its still installed, won't let me un-install it, claiming it was installed by a different user - and even logging on with Administrator won't let me remove it. What a load of bollocks.

Not only did it kill of IE completely, it also killed Office Outlook 2003 moaning it needed IE4 or higher to work.

DO NOT INSTALL IE7 F YOU FANCY EITHER YOUR SANITY OR A WORKING SYSTEM.

Surprisingly, or not, Microsoft's help doesn't mention what to do with a failed install and how to recover your system. I don't mind testing beta products and don't expect them to be stable. But, if they make a mess of your system it would be nice to have some help on recoving the situation.

If you feel like checking the MS artical on 'recovering IE6 in Windows XP' don't bother. It suggests re-installing SP2. That doesn't work either, as SP2 crashes on reboot and recovers absolutely nothing of use.

The useless system restore feature failed to restore anything useable yet again... has anyone had this thing work? Ever?

Finally, after a lot of web surfing using the, fortunately still working, FireFox you can uninstall it by hacking the registry and adding the following:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

add a new string value - InstalledByUser
with a value of the account you used to install this pile of crap in the first place.

Close regedit and unstall.

Have a lot of fun. Choose FireFox.

Oracle and Apache TNS Problems

Today was a confusing world of Oracle's TNS and Apache not talking to each other…

Several installs later on different PCs with, supposedly, the same settings and one PC just wouldn't go. No matter what I tried, Apache kept groaning about TNS not being able to resolve the name. Fantastic.

After spending an age checking ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_SID and a host of other stuff it was eventually tracked to the environment variables not being passed so Apache wasn't recognising HOME or SID.

A browse through the Apache docs found that you can force Apache to get the environment settings, although why this is needed now when its been doing happy on every other PC I've no idea.

If you get a similar problem and ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID are both set in your environment (system, not user!) then try forcing Apache to get them. Not enough space on here to ho into how exactly, but check the Apache docs for how to! It'll also depend on what version of Apache your running on exactly how this is done (I think!).

This problem was on Windows XP and Apache 2.2.

Have a lot of fun! … where's my SuSE box gone???

Trains Online

My personal website. Had to give it a mention! You never know, may get the Google Page Rank a bit higher!

Check it out for UK train information.

Depot Optimisation Tool

Nearing completion of my first project for MSE, the Depot Optimisation Tool is online! Go check out the brochure!

Designed to assist depot controllers, HQ and depot operations through real-time train information and historical service histories.

Welcome to my world

Welcome to my world! I'll be adding bits n bobs that I've found useful over time as well as little perls of wisdon and some random bits from the world of the Sheff found on my travles through the world of IT consultancy.

With a bit of luck you'll find this useful as well... u never know!